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Durm, Josef
(b Karlsruhe, 14 Feb 1837; d Karlsruhe, 3 April 1919). German architect and teacher. His preference for the Renaissance Revival style was apparent from his student days at the Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule and was influenced by the writings of Jacob Burckhardt and Gottfried Semper. Graduating in 1860, he was immediately given a post working for the Grand Duchy of Baden. In 1867 he argued in print in favour of a study of the Italian Renaissance as the basis for a proper architectural training, and the following year he was appointed professor at the Technische Hochschule. At about this time he designed the Vierordtbad (opened 1873) in the Italian Renaissance style in KARLSRUHE. As a large, secular, public building, it typified Durm’s later commissions, which included about 30 buildings for the Grand Duchy. As the most senior officer in the building administration of Baden (1887–1902), architect of its most important buildings and a university professor (1868–1919), he was a dominant influence on the architecture of Baden. The style of monumental historicism that he originated, drawing on the idioms of the Italian, German, French and Netherlandish Renaissance, typifies late 19th-century German taste for display. His work includes the Städtische Festhalle (1875–7) with its colossal exedra, his most important early work, and the Baroque Revival Erbgrossherzogliches Palais (1892–7), both in Karlsruhe; also the University Library (1901–5) at Heidelberg and his most important late work, the headquarters of the Oberrheinische Versicherungsgesellschaft (1908–11) in Mannheim, which shows an astonishing adaptation to modernist styles. Durm’s residential work included some of the grandest villas in Karlsruhe, such as the Prinz-Max-Palais (1881–4; now the Städtische Galerie). He built few churches, although St Johann in der Wiehre (1894–9) in Freiburg is an outstanding example of the late historicist Romanesque Revival. Durm’s influence outside Baden and his great versatility are documented by numerous important publications such as the Handbuch der Architektur, which he co-founded (1881), and the inventory of Baden’s secular monuments directed by him from 1886.
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